Travel Stories

The city of Nairobi is a trip, and Kenya seems
very different than Tanzania, far more so let’s say than the U.S. and Canada,
and perhaps less so than the U.S. and Mexico. Nairobi is an urban capital with
skyscrapers, hustle, real coffee shops, university students, political debate
crowds gathered on street corners, kids begging in the crowded streets, pizza
shops, supermarkets, opticians, discos, easily as full of quickly moving foot
traffic as Manhattan or Calcutta, although nothing compares with Varanasi. There is a clearly urban, go get ‘em attitude
evident in Nairobi, and a certain warmth and visible engagement among the
people. On my “administrative” day in the city, I arrange for a four day three
night relatively inexpensive tenting safari to Maasai Mara and some Lake with
pink flamingos, book my flight to Addis for the coming Saturday, commit to a
round trip flight for Sam arriving in Dakar in a bit more than two weeks, and a
flight home for me with him less than a month from now. I’ve been on the road over six weeks and each
of the “units” of my travel seems particularized and discrete: Lesotho,
Sizanani, Ruaha, Zanzibar, Moshi, and Kenya, with Ethiopia and Senegal yet to
come. I also visit the Isak Dinesen museum in the
Karen section on the outer edge of Nairobi and enjoy seeing the effort given to
sustaining aspects of the farm she created and the absolutely good faith maintenance
of the home she had built in the early 1920s, with authentic kitchen equipment,
plates, library, bedroom, etc.She was a
fascinating, risk taking, iconoclastic, accomplished woman, and her book, “Out
of Africa,” captures an era in colonial Africa that the movie on which it is
based – with Meryl Streep in the lead role – also accurately reflects. When I again head out on safari the next day in
the van with me are two unmarried couples in their early thirties, all of whom are
sweet, urbane, good-humored, and visibly in love with their partners.The man in the Argentine pair is a musician
artist who plays an accordion-like instrument in a tango quintet and orchestra,
has long hair, a beard, been to the Montreal Jazz Festival, played at Lincoln
Center, and is obviously a kind, considerate, sweet guy - a bit of a beatnik
even - and someone in love with his craft.I’m eager to hear his riff.The Argentinian
woman is a social worker in the elementary schools of Buenos Aires.I feel such openness and ease with them, and
with the other couple in the van, that I find myself talking and conversing
socially in a way I usually never do, and certainly have not done in months,
and don’t think I miss.What strikes me in
this regard is how discomfort free my life really is on the road, no matter the
hassles, because nothing gets to my gut.I’d like to keep it that way when home, but “know” that being in the
U.S. and in my everyday life somehow presents a set of everyday annoyances that
get to me in a way very little does while traveling.No, actually, Katie, I don’t really know that
is true. The woman in the other couple is a yoga teacher
and masseuse in Sao Paolo. She is beyond
attractive in her demeanor and very design, touching my arm when she talks,
laughing in the deep free manner I find so appealing, and absolutely
charming.Her partner is a Canadian man who
has worked for years at an NGO in the Congo, and is the most broadly traveled man
- especially throughout Africa and Asia - that I think I have ever met other
than the deservedly legendary Armand Kuris, a reference few will get, but trust
me, Armand has only missed one or two places on the planet in his quest to have
visited everywhere - every state, every continent, every country, county, river,
mountain, and desert, has even traveled to the bottom of the deepest oceans in
a highly pressurized submersible. The Canadian/Brazilian couple met on a bus in
India, you’ve got to like that.They
plan to live together in Brazil after his contract with the NGO ends.I like them, and while envious of the
physical attention and affection the men receive from the women, I seem these
days to be of another world and quite content in it. The drive out of Nairobi reaches the Rift
Valley escarpment in less than two hours.The Rift was created as the continents of Africa and Europe “crashed”
into one another a few hundred million years ago and the tectonic pressure
created a fracture in the African landmass that runs from the Mediterranean
down into Tanzania.The vista across the
valley is stunningly beautiful, perhaps running for as many as ten miles before
small mountains rise up inside the rift, blocking any greater east/west line of
sight.The valley itself stretches one
hundred kilometers across from side to side, is about 1,000 miles long, an absolutely
god inspiring and breathtaking site.The
parallel escarpments are very sheer and steep.On the valley floor I can make out narrow dirt roads and occasional
clusters of huts.The valley suggests
the sweep and majesty of the Sinai, except the Rift Valley is mostly a deep
green fertile plain dotted with trees and brush, while the Sinai is a white and
gray rocky desert, once the floor of a salty sea.Seeing each valley is one of those sights
beyond compare, like Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Rockies rising up
from the plains. Once we’ve descended onto the valley floor the
prototypically poor African roadside and roadside scenes repeat themselves for
miles.Shacks with mud, tin, or cow shit
walls and tin roofs that function as beauty parlors, convenience stores, auto
repair and supply shops, the “Blessings Pub,” the cell phone charging store for
those with phones but no electricity, and no friends with electricity.There’s more than one hovel with a sign
declaring it both a butchery and hotel.One
uses a blanket for a doorway. And then there’s a “hill” so steep our driver
has to negotiate his way up it by weaving from side to side like a bicyclist climbing
a steep roadway might.After which we glide
down hill, watch the water temperature gauge in the van drop, and stop for
lunch at the “Dreaming Garden Restaurant,” right before the town of Narok, where
there is a reasonably nice pre-paid buffet that all the vans filled with
Germans, Japanese, Bulgarian, and even American tourists headed for Maasai Mara
stop at for a lunch of chapattis, chicken stew, and rice.Then, after passing through Narok and making
a quick left turn we are on the absolutely impossible one hundred kilometer
dirt and rock road to Maasai Mara, a road that makes the Mesa Verde road in
Costa Rica seem like a distant runner up in the world’s worst road contest.I mean these are not potholes, they’re
craters, and the things jutting up in the roadway are not rocks, they’re
boulders.It’s an obstacle course with
water traps bigger than those on golf courses, sides of the road where our two-wheel
drive vehicle tilts over at a forty-five degree angle.But does any of this slow our team driver
down?Not a lick. He drives as if he was at Le Mans, a bone
jarring, spring testing, shock absorber collapsing, chassis rattling, grinding,
low gear screaming, 100 kilometer ride to the park entrance and our tenting site,
where we high five one another at surviving the trip, drop off our gear in
tents, and without much pause jump back into the van to continue to be rattled around
for another few hours on our first “game drive” into Maasai Mara. Maasai
Mara is very different than Ruaha: the valley floor is less covered with trees
and brush, the number of vehicles also out on drives changes the sense of
isolation to one of crowding, the vistas are broader, and game is more easily
visible: big herds of zebra, wildebeest who didn’t go south for the winter,
gazelles and giraffes by the score, water buffalo everywhere, warthogs,
mongoose, lions.The highlight of the
afternoon is a very brief spotting of a leopard, a truly inspiring sight no
matter how brief it was, which draws no less than thirty vehicles to the bushes
the cat was seen walking in to wait for the elusive leopard’s next move, only
to discover after some time that the leopard has either hidden itself
brilliantly and isn’t intending to move before dark, or has simply vanished
into thin air, consistent with its unique powers. On
the morning of my second day in Maasai Mara I awaken in my tent to the most
incredible natural light, the sounds of the bells on the necks of Maasai cows,
sheep, and goats moving out to pasture, and, not exactly looking forward to the
daylong game drive we’re scheduled to be on beginning at 6 A.M. (I’ve done
quite enough driving thank you, and seen all the animals I need to see), but it’s
what I’ve come for, and the end of the day promises a visit to an authentic
Maasai village, which I’m quite looking forward to. Almost
immediately inside the park we come upon a lone lioness guarding her gazelle
kill.We also see many of the impala,
kudu, wildebeest, buffalo, giraffes, and elephants we saw grazing
yesterday.The scenery and the vistas
are spectacular and we ride and ride on through the park for hours, headed
toward the Tanzanian Serengeti border. At
one point we veer off onto a grassy wet track and after about one hundred
meters our two-wheel drive vehicle is unable to sustain any forward motion,
sinking down into soft mud, its rear wheels spinning uselessly.But this presents a very different challenge
than the parallel event in Ruaha, because we can actually leave the van running
in gear, its rear wheels spinning uselessly in the mud and grass, and all get
out of the van, get behind it, and push, which is enough to free the van, which
our driver jumps back into and continues his forward momentum until back on a
more tread worthy track about four hundred meters away, leaving us all standing
in the field, cheering at the liberation of the van, and the fact we are actually
outside the vehicle, able to walk a few feet across this precious land, which I
do, taking off my sandals, my toes squishing through the mud and wriggling with
delight. At the Tanzanian border, right before
the fast moving Mara River crosses from Kenya into Tanzania, we again get out
of the van and I walk into Tanzania toward the big giraffes grazing at the tops
of trees in the Serengeti gathering stones left by the raging river at flood
crest brought down from the mountains on the Mara’s 300 kilometer run to Lake
Victoria. I think of the Canadian border
I lived on in Northern Vermont in the early seventies that we’d cross on
tractor, on foot, and on horseback without much regard for border patrols and
border stations.(How else can you breed
your prized Percheron mare to a renowned Canadian stallion?) At
the Mara we see hippos doing what hippos do in the river.We see a crocodile at least twelve feet long,
striped in brown and yellow.We see the
skeletal remains of 100s of wildebeest injured in the massive annual river
crossing and left to die by the side of the river.I harvest what I think is a wildebeest tibia
or femur, but whatever it is, the engineering and sculptural simplicity of the
joint are wondrous. The
highlight of the day for me, of course, is my visit to a “thriving?” nearby
Maasai village, which the others in my party decline to do because they think
it is too touristy and not respectful of the Maasai, although the son of the
chief of this village who greets us, tells us he considers it an honor and a
sign of respect that people want to see and learn about the Maasai. The
Maasai fascinate me.They are a quite
well known tribe in part because they tend to occupy lands near heavily visited
tourist sites like Ngorogoro, Serengeti, and Maasai Mara, in part because of
their distinctive garb and habits, in part because there are still nearly one
million of them!, and in part because among all the major tribal groups in
Africa they have somehow, and for some reasons, mostly resisted the almost
inordinate temptations, pressure, and convenience the comforts of modernity
offer, and persist in successfully and intentionally continuing to live the
pastoral, migratory, spare lifestyle they have lived for centuries. When
I tell Salau, the chief’s eldest son, that it is not necessary that the dozen
men - some of whom can be seen in the photo below - dance for me Salau laughs
and says, “It is necessary.It’s a sign
of respect.We would not consider
welcoming even a Maasai from another village without dancing for them.”So be it.You’ve seen this dance before perhaps.The men stand in a line, their arms tucked inside their blanket
coverings, and jump up, seemingly effortlessly, springing straight up into the
air, springing up like pogo stick riders, chanting a drone-like didgeridoo-like
harmony as a lead singer calls out the words to the welcoming song.One dancer comes to the fore and offers his
highest jumps, almost as if in some sort of athletic contest, that dancer is then
replaced one after the other until all of the men have jumped their best jumps.
Salau jumps last.The men’s faces are expressionless throughout,
whether a result of repetitive “performances” they must give to what at times
must be a daily flow of visitors, or a cultural fact of unknown significance.Their bodies are stiff.They are jumping in unison.It is both "understated" anquite spectacular in effect. When
the dance is over Salau and another man lead me into their village, which is
a corral-like circle of mud and cow shit huts and a tall stick fence to keep
all the cattle in, and all the predators out, at night.I am led into one of the huts.It is low, dark, hot, almost claustrophobic,
and very smoky.A young girl is tending
the fire and mixing a thickening brew of cow’s blood and cow’s milk, the staple
of the Maasai diet, along with occasional meat, and ground maize porridge.They eat almost nothing else, no vegetables,
and surely no fruit.They do not hunt
for food, which would be a violation of their creed about wild animals.They do not plant crops, which would be a
violation of their creed about the soil and when it may and may not be
disturbed.They do bury their dead and
their feces ... shallowly.They have no
electricity and no water, even from a pump, but gather all water in old plastic
containers from a local stream. I
ask Salau if the Maasai were able to secure electricity and water whether
he/they would choose to do so and he says no.I ask him why and he says he lived in Narok while going to high school
and didn’t like it, that the traditional Maasai way of life is comfortable,
familiar, healthful, and inherently morally/culturally good as is.In my brief research on line, I discover that
although the Maasai have a very high infant mortality rate, they, in fact, also
have a very low incidence of cancer and heart disease, a phenomenon that is not
sustained or evident in those Maasai who abandon village life. Sitting
in the dark, smoky, windowless, furniture less, storage less, virtually barren
cow shit hut on a single wooden plank I ask Salau what the people of his village
do at night, how the next generation of Maasai will resist the temptations of
the modern world, about the role of women, about Maasai participation in
national elections and national governance, about inheritance practices, death
and burial practices, schooling, cattle ownership, marriage.You can take the man out of anthropology, but
you cannot take the anthropologist out of the man.I won’t bother to share all the data
here.Most of this information, of
course, is available in any good ethnography, or, if you’re interested in a
true autobiographical romantic tale written in a somewhat turgid but
anthropologically revealing style by a Swiss woman about her marriage to a
Maasai man, read “White Masai.” What
I will say is that about 300 people live in the village and all are members of
one clan.That Salau’s father has three
wives, sixteen children, and two hundred cows, worth about five hundred to one
thousand U.S. dollars each.Salau has
about thirty cows.Only sons inherit.The inheritance is shared equally among the
chief’s sons regardless of their birth mother or birth order, but only the
eldest son replaces the chief.That the
village is only five years old, and that consistent with their migratory
practices, in time Salau expects they will all move on. And that the village was absolutely teeming
with young children, everyone of whom had runny noses and flies on their faces. I
also visit the area school, which serves close to six hundred children, and is
situated on the outskirts of the village.I was toured around the school, a row of low lying classroom, by the
second grade teacher - classroom photo below - who has over seventy children in
her one class.Her description of the
challenges in getting school supplies alone evoked from me a small immediate
cash donation.I was also touched by her
description of how a team of Irish firemen came to spend a week living at the
tent site and in that time completely built a new cinderblock classroom at the
school, which she proudly shows me.And
then there was that one huge satellite dish antenna donated by a man from
America that runs off solar panels he also donated, intended to power the four
computers he donated.Unfortunately,
none of this equipment is at all functional and no one knows how to repair
it.Maybe that’s the metaphor or the
image I want to leave you with about the Maasai, surrounded by modern
technology that looks good, but so far simply doesn’t seem to serve their
purposes.